or you can click here.

now i am back on track again, feeling healthy and flushed with renewed energy. my face looks a bit slimmer, the jowls are reduced. this often happens when i get fever, but with my healthy appetite, i am sure the jowls will be back in no time.

earlier tonight, my wife was feeling under the weather, no doubt she has gotten hold of my bug, but somehow summoned the energy to follow me to the rally at ang mo kio. it was my first rally experience (i know! how katak-di-bawah-tempurung!) and i was blown out of my mind. i kinda felt excited to be part of this whole legal assembly thingie, where people were all satu hati satu jiwa. KETUK BESI!

hehehe… (remember..prison got no broadband..)

anyway, i am in the midst of migrating ridj.org to its own secured hosting. what this means, hopefully, is that i will be able to set up wordpress on my hosting and make it more customizeable. i am getting sick of this standard template and i think this blog needs a bit sprucing up. so ridj.org will experience a bit of interruption as we commence this Blog Upgrading Program (don’t worry, i won’t ask you readers to co-pay with me…) but you can still tune in to ridj.wordpress.com as the works are going on.

i think the works might be a bit slow, because i can only afford to employ one bangladeshi worker and attempt to make him work around the clock. his name is asad, you all be nice to him now.

(“you know he’s back at it again, when he starts spouting nonsense and his eyes gleam like that” – someone said this once, i can’t remember who..)

"Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from
one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never
graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a
college graduation.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big
deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the
dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but
then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I
really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My
biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided
to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be
adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be
adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped
out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl.
So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of
the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?"
They said, "Of course."

My biological mother found out later that my mother had never
graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from
high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only
relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go
to college. This was the start in my life. And 17 years later, I did
go to college, but I naively chose a college that was almost as
expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings
were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't
see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life,
and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out. And
here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire
life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out
OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of
the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop
taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping
in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room so I slept on the
floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the 5-cent
deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town
every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna
temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my
curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me
give you one example.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy
instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every
label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had
dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to
take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about
serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space
between different letter combinations, about what makes great
typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in
a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life.
But 10 years later when we were designing the first Macintosh
computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac.
It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never
dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never
had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since
Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer
would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never
dropped in on that calligraphy class and personal computers might not
have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I
was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years
later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only
connect them looking backward, so you have to trust that the dots will
somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your
gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever—because believing that the dots
will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your
heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will
make all the difference.

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky I found what I
loved to do early in life. Woz [ Steve Wozniak] and I started Apple in
my parents' garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years,
Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion
company with over 4,000 employees. We'd just released our finest
creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned 30, and
then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started?
Well, as Apple grew we hired someone, who I thought was very talented,
to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went
well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and
eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors
sided with him, and so at 30, I was out, and very publicly out. What
had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was
devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt
that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I
had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David
Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly.
I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away
from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still
loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one
bit. I'd been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to
start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple
was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness
of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner
again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the
most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started
a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love
with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to
create the world's first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story,
and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to
Apple. And the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of
Apple's current renaissance, and Laurene and I have a wonderful family
together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been
fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the
patient needed it. Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with
a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept
me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you
love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work
is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be
truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only
way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it
yet, keep looking and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart,
you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just
gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't
settle.

My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went
something like, "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday
you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and
since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every
morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life,
would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the
answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to
change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most
important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices
in life, because almost everything—all external expectations, all
pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall
away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid
the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already
naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in
the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't
even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost
certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect
to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go
home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for prepare
to die. It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought
you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It
means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be
as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your good-byes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy
where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and
into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells
from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that
when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started
crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic
cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and,
thankfully, I am fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the
closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can
now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a
useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die. Even
people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there, and
yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.
And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single
best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the
old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you. But someday
not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be
cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time
is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be
trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's
thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own
inner voice, and most important, have the courage to follow your heart
and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to
become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called the Whole
Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was
created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo
Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the
late '60s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was
all made with typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras. It was sort
of like Google in paperback form 35 years before Google came along. It
was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart
and his team put out several issues of the Whole Earth Catalog, and
then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was
the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final
issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you
might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath
it were the words "stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell
message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have
always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew,
I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Thank you all very much."

indeed, when we got to the resort (tiara beach resort), there were two things that caused us dismay. firstly, the reception was flooded with kids and some clowns giving out balloon animals to the kids. with all the running around and exploding balloons left and right, getting to the front desk was like treading over a minefield. for my wife, this was a nightmare, since she was always surrounded by pesky kids at work and now she’s driven 200km and find herself surrounded by more pesky kids.

secondly, the name of the resort itself was deceptive. tiara beach resort, ironically, is surrounded by dense vegetation on three sides. the beach is nowhere to be seen. in fact, you have to drive out about 10km to get to the beach. but it was more of a water theme park, infested with millions of kids.

that was our weekend. my wife and i have sworn that we shall never hereforth return to that place again, unless of course, either one of us were to lose our mind temporarily and suggest going there, in which case, the other party is given power-of-attorney to slap the suggesting party back to sense.

attending to business. kesian budak nie, dia kena gigit semut.

it’s all about sharing the laughter.

free counselling session (green facial mudpack also free for 1st 20 customers)
“Ye, nak, ader aper masalah?” sheesh, macam meet-the-people session.

the Pepsi Taste challenge. in a classic show of desperation, brought on by the blasted heat and erratic thunderstorms, we fashion our own champagne glass, and get high on Pepsi Max. (male-bonding session in operation)

ken appears a bit bemused that his new ipod seems to play only bollywood songs.

one of these lovely boys was unlucky enough to have his birthday fall on the last day of the training. as a gift from the rest of us, he got his butt shined good and fine with black shoe polish. for the sake of protecting his identity since he is still a minor, we shall not reveal his name.

p.s. thanks senior medic. the pics are awesome. i wanted to post up the links to the pics but some of them were a bit explicit lah… (a few pictures depicting us watering the plants, if ya know wha’ i mean, yeah?)

It’s a very captivating read, about how the world economy is gearing itself in a new direction, where the majority of workers will find themselves self-employed and the markers for success will have to be readjusted.

For me, it is now only a matter of time.

The other day I was talking to a friend’s father, who has been self-employed for many years, dabbling in insurance, real estate and also his own software company, which he runs in partnership with a software engineer based in pakistan. I remarked to my wife how I have a handful of friends who do this.

She told me that there are certain people (of a certain background origin) who will only work for themselves. it is against their belief to work for someone else, owing to their forefathers’ time, when they were farmers or fishermen who only depended on their own catch or crop for survival. I find this interesting. Anyone has further information on this?

this is the first time that i have been involved in the frontline of this effort of arranging for accomodations. calling up a few travel agencies from the newspaper ads, i realise that they comprise of a motley crew of samsengs and looney characters. one uncle was very rowdy and candid, it was almost as if i wanted to borrow money from him.

another lady proclaimed in a sing-song voice, “we are all fuuuullllyy boooookkkeed!”

seems like the Pekej Maju puts everyone in a good mood this week.

I couldn't help myself but to laugh out loud. Perhaps it's pronounced as Ah Huat or something, but was mis-spelled on the namecard. Come to think of it, perhaps he has friends named Ah Why, Ah How, Ah Who and Ah Where.

They all go to work in a When.  

it’s all about sharing the laughter.

one of these lovely boys was unlucky enough to have his birthday fall on the last day of the training. as a gift from the rest of us, he got his butt shined good and fine with black shoe polish. for the sake of protecting his identity since he is still a minor, we shall not reveal his name.

p.s. thanks sugiman. the pics are awesome. i wanted to post up the links to the pics but some of them were a bit explicit lah…

the tricky part is having the wisdom to recognize the right opportunity and seize it. 

Salman Khan’s in for five years of jail term. Maybe now he’d get some time to think about making wiser movie choices, rather than the drivel he’s been continuously putting out.

on the other hand, here’s someone who’s totally full of herself…

taken from khyr.blogspot.com. basket ball betul. fellow bloggers, pls don’t do this kind of thing to me, okay? boleh heart attack, y’know..

i'll have to admit. it took a hell of a lot of effort to start going back to work again. to go back to the drudgery of a nine-to-five existence. but, well, here i am.

how do i start the days? by taking big lungfuls of breath and trying to fill my body with oxygen. i know it sounds silly, but this really helps. when was the last time you enjoyed the way air courses through your body, redistributing its components to the different parts of your body and your bloodstream? enjoy it while we're still healthy.

<b>p.s</b> to yusman, congrats on the new post. hope you have a blast.

i went to mak’s place, deliberated about watching ‘inside man’ (heard it’s good), but did not. instead, we went to mustafa until around 3am. someday, i am going to write an essay of sorts on mustafa and its mechanics, but the parts of it are still tumbling around in the front-load washer that’s in my head.

one part of in-camp training that i enjoy is the exchange of reading materials. we each bring something we mean to read but eventually end up swapping our books and getting engrossed in the other’s books. this time around i lugged haruki murakami’s ‘kafka on the shore’ and my friend, yusman, brought ‘freakonomics’. this latter book is the bomb, i tell you. i couldn’t get my head out of it. it sets you thinking. meanwhile, yusman is already three quarters into kafka on the shore.

i also particularly enjoy the company of medics. to me, we are a special breed of people. the system was designed to stream us into our respective vocations by our aptitude levels, and i find like-minded people with a healthy appetite for good-natured humour and who are endlessly introspective about the smallest things (this, by the way, is a by-product of seinfeldization).

medics are also a bit sadistic, given that we regularly use 21g needles to poke each others’ arms for practice purposes. not only that, we also engage in navigational sessions, where we then try to direct the needle, in search of the elusive blood vein. as a medic, you have to take pain. and in time, you learn to dish it out. i remember a lesson my instructor once taught me, ‘if the patient is still yelling in pain, he’s still alright. when he stops, then you should be worried.’ so pain is good.

and to cap things off, i had a very weird encounter during lunch one day in camp. one of the officers in the camp approached me and asked, “does podah sound familiar to you?”

i hardly had time to gulp down my mouthful, when officer khairol revealed that blucat had tasked him to search and destroy (bedek lah) me. but what a pleasant encounter. i’ve always thought khairol was a nice looking guy but never had the chance to strike up a conversation with him. this created an ice-breaker for us. (blucat, do remember to ask him about the time he became our walking off pass, allowing us to go out of camp).

another strange thing is that the guys in my bunk seem to be obsessed about brokeback mountain. almost any situation seems to lead to a brokeback joke. go figure.

this country is too kind to me.

But things are still not as bad as it used to be last time. I have learnt through experience that things have a way of working out, that sometimes you have to let go and leave it in the hands of a Higher Being. Times like these, you have to fall back on faith and let faith do its work.

So I guess I can safely say to myself that I am no longer the same anal-retentive person I was a couple of years back, when the slightest things could rile me up and make me go berzerk. I have learnt to loosen up considerably and to take a more balanced view of life. There’s no use hanging on too tightly to material things, in the end they all go bust, and it’s not like you can carry any of that to where you’re headed to eventually.

I must credit this change in me to my wife. She knows her priorities well and always values relationships over material possessions. I still have a lot to learn, but as long I am willing, I think I will be safe.

My wife and I have our own Oracle too. She is my wife's youngest sister and her natural habitat is her cosy room. In fact, almost anytime we need a phone number or the latest movie listings, she'd be our hotline. She's like our own personal Sistic.

She is also a blogger, i think, but so secretive that i have yet to uncover her blog…  and another amazing talent she has is to win prizes off radio. She's got the green thumb for all these contests. Dia tekan nombor mesti dapat punye. So far she has won an iPod and many other prizes.

Yesterday night, she called us to ask if we wanted backstage passes to Jamie Cullum's concert. Macam she already has the physical tickets, but actually she said she could call in and win it.

"Make sure it's Jamie Cullum," I shouted in the background as my wife was on the phone with her. "Jangan-jangan Jamie Kalam or Jamie Klump.."

 That's quite lame, when you write it down. Sheesh.

“I’m really excited! Really excited! This is going to change the way people watch TV! This show is going to change your life!” RIDJALD TRUMPUMPUMP announced at a press conference on Monday. There were 12 translators at the conference to help reporters make out what he saying, due to him speaking while still maintaining his famous pout.

“I’m looking for a Prataprentice to handle a department of my business empire! The TRUMPUMPUMP name is synonymous with Singapore’s best Prata. If selected, the lucky candidate will be in charge of my new project, the Integrated Prata Resort at Jalan Kayu. This $500million-dollar project will have a giant Prata-tissue tunnel ride and Fish-curry swimming pools, Roti John-rollercoasters, Prata-Telor bouncing castles and also Pratapalooza music concerts,” said the RIDJALD, stroking his famous toupee-moustache.

“In fact, we are also currently in negotiation with Pratamount Pictures to produce a local James Bond movie. If successful, my Prataprentice will get a chance to star as Agent Kosong Kosong Telur,” the RIDJALD pouted.

The RIDJALD made his billions in the 1970s when he introduced ‘prata noodles’ into the market. He also composed the famous song, ‘Roti John Johnny Jonathana Trumpumpumpumpump’. He is now one of the richest men in the country, with enemies like Richard Brengset and Martha Sthosai.

“I will only choose from the finest in the country. The search is on for the smartest young talents in Singapore! If you’ve got prata in your blood, this is your chance! Forget all that Singapore Idle rubbish and join the show that matters!” the RIDJALD roared. His moustache threatened to slip off.

Application forms can be found at all good mama shops.

and to those who thought about joining, i thank you too for your interest. we’ll do it again soon, and you must join ah, procrastinating alligators you..

and also not forgetting the readers hiding in the bushes and drooling all over our blogs, ah kam sia also ah you all.. keep kindling.

so now blogmarathon is over….hmmm.. now what…

But I think what bugs me more about the question ‘Why do you blog?’ is that I am unable to fully explain why. I am unable to provide a concrete, solid and reasonable answer why. It’s not about the glamour (as someone asked me before, ‘Is it the glamour!?’ and all I could think was, Are you shitting me? What glamour are you talking about? What glamour can there be in posting online ramblings and bitchings about one’s discontent with the world?)

Bloggers are a dime a dozen. In fact, if you opened your window and hurled a wet ball of tissue paper out of it, chances are quite good that you might hit a blogger. We are everywhere. We write about everything. In fact, we are redefining the term ‘verbal diarrhoea’.

These days, it seems you can’t get through your teenage years without having a blog. It’s like part and parcel of the growing up phase. You get your first wet dream, you get your first kiss, you get a blog. It’s a rite of passage.

But many blogs are stillborns, tadpoles that die out before they even get a chance to grow their third legs. What gives a blogger staying power? What pushes him/her to keep going after the dust has settled down? Surely it’s passion. For photography, for communication (which explains why there are more women than men blogging), for community.

For me, it’s a passion for writing. I could say I’ve been blogging since I first touched a computer. It was the first thing that bowled me over about a computer; launching Word and typing sentence after sentence. I was just so amazed that this box on my table gave me a licence to write. This was years before I discovered the Internet (a discovery that drove me insane).

And like a moth to a flame, I was of course drawn to blogging, an arena where my words could be seen, could be read. Show me a writer who writes without a secret yearning in his heart to be read, and I’ll show you a liar.

So there, that’s my reason for blogging. What’s yours?

We shared the same camp, a makeshift military hospital that was collectively manned by Australian, Egyptian and Singaporean forces. The Portugese team guarded the walls of the hospital. Australian team would be on 24hr shift on one day and Singaporean-Egyptian team would be on 24hr shift the next day. We alternated this way for 3 mths.

My first memory of encountering the Egyptian team was at breakfast, the second morning we were in East Timor. At the cookhouse, divided into 2 portions, Australian and Egyptian, we encountered the long snake of tall, tanned, athletic men. They were jostling and nudging and pinching and disturbing one another non-stop. This was a group of guys who could not wait in a queue for long.

I grew used to eating Egyptian food in the 3 mths there. Sometimes they’d just eat a naan-type of bread with chili hijau and bawang (and nothing else, i’m serious!) and sometimes, it’d be chickpeas with rice and yellow noodles (all carbo man!). But sometimes we got chicken chops and some curry.

Aziz was an ambulance driver we got to know real quick, because he’d keep popping into our tent to shoot the bull and chit-chat with us in his limited English. However, he was a really smart guy and damn fit also, blessed with a Manhunt kind of physique which he maintained by jogging every morning in a red tracksuit. He also looked a bit like Sly Stallone in Rocky.

Said was his sidekick, a gollum-looking older man with wife and kids, who was always very excited to be with us. He was full of glee and enthusiasm. It’s especially nerve-wracking when you’re trying to draw blood from one of the patients and you turn around and see these two guys observing you with wide smiles at the back of the tent.

The Egyptian colonels were also very friendly people. I’d been invited to have tea with them a couple of times, which is also just as nerve-wracking, all these high-ranking army guys with violent moustaches, sitting around on lounge chairs and holding tiny cups of tea with saucers, sipping slowly, muttering in guttural Arabic and then turning every now and then to smile at you and nod their heads repetitively.

I remember fondly also the Friday prayers, where the Egyptians and Muslim Singaporeans congregated at another long tent. From outside, it looked like a circus tent. But inside it was cool and quiet. The imam was a very vocal person and when he gave his khutbah, he was always very penuh semangat. Of course I didn’t understand a single word being said. And surprisingly, no one nodded off or fell asleep, unlike here in Singapore, where everyone seems to have been giving some sort of sleeping potion and heads start to drop like flies halfway through the sermon.

But most of all, I remember the Egyptian dinners. These were colourful, vibrant celebrations full of cheer and good food. The cooks stopped at nothing, the spread would bowl you over. And then there would be good-humoured laughter and dancing. All would be present, the Australians, the shy Portugese, the Singaporeans. And the Egyptians embraced us all with such warmth.

I want to thank them for the memories, and for letting me know that somewhere in the world, people embraced each other with such love, unlike the place where I live, where anal retention seems to have found a way to crawl itself into faces.

Surreal but true
To be frank, I’ve been wearing contact lenses for almost 12 years, since Sec 3 when I discovered the wonders of modern technology and suddenly began coming to school looking a bit more hemsem. But I’ve always been a notoriously careless wearer of contact lenses.

(Not as bad as one friend of mine though, who fell asleep with his contacts on and they rolled back in his eyeballs. To this day, he maintains that the lenses slipped back into his cranial space and is lost forever.)

Back when I was in BMT, I contracted a mild eye infection, also due to negligent contact lens wear. I went to report sick, the original plan was to get MC and be allowed to return home. This was on a Friday, and I was expecting a long weekend.

However, the doctor must have caught on to my scheme, because he actually sent me to the sickbay over the whole weekend. Backfired!!! I spent the whole weekend, staring forlornly at the white walls and ceiling, detesting the medics and plotting my revenge. Sadly enough, it was the army that got its revenge on me, for little did I know that I would myself soon be a medic.

I also distinctly remember a Robbie Williams song, being played again and again (or maybe it was just me high on the medicine) and longing desperately for her love. There was a line that wrenched at my heart. It went, “if there’s somebody calling me home, she’s the one.”

That was also about the same time that I realised I was a mat jiwang. And to be frank, I didn’t mind anymore.

Because when you’re in a sickbed with a dozen other guys who are acting sick (to the point of looking retarded), clad in a grey T-shirt and black shorts, with nothing to read and nothing to do at all, you start to become okay with almost anything.

p.s. Has anyone reached their 10th post yet?
p.p.s stands for Pompuan Penuh Smangat.
p.p.p.s The title of this entry is the main reason why my Malay teacher gave up on me and asked for a transfer to another school. j/k.

Last night’s guests were Vivek Oberoi and John Abraham. Vivek, Mr India and arguably Bollywood’s answer to Keanu Reeves, an actor with one facial expression, a mixture of constipation and straight-out blur. And John, the model with the brain, many are still skeptical about his acting abilities, but having seen him in movies like Jism, Dhoom and Garam Masala, I think it’s only a matter of time before he starts batting with the big boys. Of course, that is given that he doesn’t make silly movie choices like Akshay Kumar and Salman Khan.

I’m not really that much into Bollywood actually. I went through the SRK phase, where every new Shah Rukh Khan movie was a must-see, you had to queue up and watch it at Bedok Cinema, but that too fizzled out. I think the average garden variety desperate housemakcik is a better-informed Bollywood fan than me. Diorang lagi up to date. And a jolly good movie only comes along once every blue moon.

(Having said that, isn’t Devdas the best movie ever? I can’t stop gushing about it..)

So as I slouched on the sofa watching Koffee with Karan, I started daydreaming about having my own talkshow, except I’d call it..

“Ribena with Ridjal,” I said aloud.

My wife gasps. “Oh man! I bet that’s the next thing I’m gonna see on your blog!” she said.

“No! Of course not!” I replied. Jeez, I’m not that predictable, am I?

Am I?

In the company of my wife’s sisters, aunts and uncle last night, as we palavered under the stars at Mak’s Place, I let show my lame streak, with unexpected results.

The conversation was very rancak. I think it began, as it always tends to begin when women meet, with cake-baking strategies and techniques being discussed. The uncle and I suddenly became very attached to the screens of our mobile phones, a familiar symptom of boredom. I briefly pondered the silly idea of having a group of makciks manning a 24-hour cake-baking call-center where distressed housewives can phone in to consult where they went wrong with their latest oven monstrosities. But I held my tongue. Such radical ideas would be frowned upon. People might start staring at me like I’d suddenly grown another nose. (No offence, MJ)

But as the conversation drifted to lipans and tikuses, I could not resist blabbing out a stupid, lame joke. “What do you call a lipan (centipede) that’s been shot many times but is still alive?” I asked out loud. Inside my head, a frantic voice was saying ‘what the hell are you doing? i can’t believe you said that out loud, have you gone berserk!? turn back! turn back!’

The whole table was quiet, all eyes on me, waiting for the punchline.

“50 Centipede,” I said. The silence was death-like. Maybe the aunts didn’t understand. Maybe the connection was a bit far-fetched. I felt like that was it, that was the end of it. From the back of the kitchen, two men in black masks would come out to fetch me and escort me to the wall at the side-alley where they would promptly gun me down and rid the world of ridj.

But after some explaining (courtesy of my sisters-in-law) and some pity laughter, we managed to bury the joke and may it rest in peace. However, the conversation had been effectively massacred and everyone seemed to fumble for the strands of a new topic.

I sat back, telling myself to lay low, under the radar.

And then the uncle told a story about his friend who had been riding on his motorcycle when a bat flew out of nowhere and rammed into his chest.

“Terus dia jadi batman ah gitu,” I said. The little voice in my head was furious. ‘What!? What!? I can’t believe you just said that! Are you insane!? Have you lost your marbles!?

But to my absolute relief, my wife broke out in loud laughter. Phew! My wife, being a seasoned receiver of ‘Ridj Lameness’, almost never laughs at my lines. She insists on rolling her eyes and shaking her head and telling me to stop it, so if she laughed, it must have been quite good.

Either that, or it must have caught her off-guard.

Saved by the belle.

1) Flying slippers
I had a very bad incident with selipar jepun once. I used to sport those white flappy slippers with the blue straps, and I was crossing the street. The green man was flashing and I was khayaling (I like to khayal..), when suddenly the slipper on my right foot slipped out and flew up into the air. I was really kancheong and superpaiseh, quickly got it back and put it on and beat a retreat. I’m sure the people at the bus-stops on both sides of the street must have seen it. Siak aje..

2) Titanic tak jadi
I once went with my wife to Sentosa and we were walking on the bridge back to WTC when I decided to seize the moment to be romantic. I swung over the bridge and declared that if she did not proclaim her love aloud, I would jump into the dark treacherous waters below. She actually hesitated to think what would happen if I fell in and how funny it would be. Tak jadik plan hamba, hampeh betul.

3) How to lose a car in 3 days
On the third day after I got my first car, I parked it at Marina Square’s basement carpark. I was meeting my army friends for some chow. After the whole thing, I offered some of my friends a ride home. We went to the carpark, and I realised that I couldn’t remember where I had parked (This, as my wife will gladly tell you, with a gleam of delight in her eyes, is classic Ridjal.) I walked around for almost an hour, with my friends in tow, and still couldn’t find it. One of my friends, Fahmi, was really tired by that time and said, “Kalau aku naik bas, dah sampai rumah dah.” Kena bahasa betul.

In the end, I realised I had parked on a different level.

4) “Don’t carry your sister”
This was when I was only 5 or 6 years old and my sis Q was just a baby. Mom had to go to the shop and she told me to mind Q in the cot. ‘Don’t lift her out or carry her. If she cries, just try to talk to her.’ I reminded my mom to get me the Neapolitan ice-cream.
After Mom left, Q started crying and wouldn’t stop. So I took a chair and climbed up to the cot and lifted her out and sat on the floor, swaying her and singing to her. When my mom got back, she almost had a heart attack. Luckily, she remembered to get the Neapolitan ice-cream.

5) Chased by a maniac cat
Living in Tampines in my primary school years, I always went to the mama shop to buy prata in the morning. One morning, I was walking back with prata in a plastic bag when a crazy cat came chasing after me. I shouted out loud and ran for a mile, flinging the plastic bag along the way. Kucing tu betul punya gila. I think he had cat flu, tak?

6) ‘I’m a lover, not a fighter..’
I make a terrible fighter. I took taekwondo lessons when I was young, all the way to blue belt, but when it comes to sparring, surely something outrageous would happen. I remember one time I was all psyched up to beat the shit out of the other boy when he gave a flying kick that knocked me out. Really, tak bedek! I blacked out for like ten seconds. Fuyoo…
Then there was the time I attempted a two-legged flying kick, meaning to kick two different guys at the same time. Apparently, I forgot all about the laws of gravity, because I fell down headfirst. Brainfreeze sekejap.

7) Out the window
In secondary school (still a geek), my malay teacher told me to throw a fellow classmate’s exercise book out of the window. I promptly did so, because I was the type always obey the teacher one. Unfortunately, I could not suppress the smile on my face, which led to the classmate confronting me after school to ‘settle’ with me. He also happened to be one of the school’s biggest bully. What a coincidence.

Internship blues
During my internship stint in poly, I was so bored out of my skull working at the engineering firm that I cabut early from work one day by crawling out of the window of the second floor and sliding down a waterpipe. The run to the bus stop was the most liberating twenty seconds for me. Luckily nobody missed me.

9) What a relief
I’ve finally reconciled with myself that I’m not meant to be a teacher. I like kids fine enough but I just don’t know how to shut them up. I did relief teaching once and in an attempt to silence an unruly kid, I lifted him up and put him on top of the metal cupboard at the back of the room. This, of course, only made him more delighted and caused the rest of the kids to kick up a commotion. One of them even asked me to lift him up next. It must be something in the water…

10) Swimming competition
Oh yeah, this one is a classic. I represented my class in a swimming competition. I don’t know why, I’ve never been a particularly good swimmer, I think I must have kana saboed. Anyway, there I was, the bang went off, I splashed in and did the breast stroke like I’ve never breast-stroked before, penuh semangat, and when I reached like about halfway, I poke my head up and saw that the other swimmers had already finished, some had gotten out and were drying off and the audience were basically bored to death and no one was watching me. Buang karan aje.

Budak-budak blogmarathon >> Fara Yasmine Yaslam Norain Midget Jones Madah Lizanoor Shsuya Muna Spongebib Hamartia Aidah Aridewa

In today’s blogmarathon, I’ll attempt to recall 10 life-changing moments in my life so far.

1) The uncle who lived at the end of the corridor
We lived in a one-room flat when I was small and there was this sweet old Indian uncle who sold sweets and what-not from his flat at the end of the corridor. I would use to run to his flat everyday with 20 or 30 cents clutched tightly in my palm (I would be only 5 or 6 yrs old) and buy handfuls of sweets. One day, I ran into his flat and saw him lying on the floor, covered in white cloth. I think it scared the hell out of me.

2) Young millionaire-wannabes
My cousin Jamir was one of my best men at my wedding (I had 2 best men, the other one was a robotic blogger from Uranus). He was born only days away from me and being the same age, we were very close growing up. I could remember that we were quite naughty growing up and one of our schemes almost got us in trouble when we were still 7 or 8 years old. We were at my grandma’s house and chanced upon a calendar with scantily-clad women in it. The next thing I know (my childhood memories are a bit patchy), we were at the void deck, watching people pass by and stopping young ladies to ask them if we could take their pictures for a calendar. Somehow we couldn’t understand why they all refused us.
We could have been the founders of FHM for all you know…

3) The bully in the schoolbus
In primary school (Gongshang, gongshang, here’s where we belong…), I took the schoolbus and there was this big galoot of a boy who always poked fun at me and shoved me and threatened me in the bus. I was really kind of a geek back then (this lasted till I was in poly, sadly) and I was really upset about this. Being a geek, I ran to complain to my mom, who calmly told me to punch him if he disturbed me again.
So I did. Boy, was that the most gratifying punch I ever dished out. Thanks Mom.

4) The girl in primary school
In Primary 4, I had the hugest crush on a girl. And she liked me too! That was some scary shit, for a young geek like me. One time, we were both tasked to carry stacks of exercisebooks to the teacher’s staffroom. She was eyeing me shyly all the way. I was so unnerved that I ran ahead and dumped the books on the table and ran off!
And then there was the time during recess when I was eating mee soto. Her friend sat down in front of me and said that someone wanted to get to know me. I looked around and saw half her head peering out from behind a pillar. My eyes got really big and I stiffened. The next thing I knew, I mumbled something incoherent (my wife says I still do that all the time) and I dashed off again. Maybe I was the inspiration for Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride…

5) I had cancer when I was fifteen
Continuing my streak of geekness, I told a girl that I had been diagnosed of brain cancer in Secondary 3. I even showed her medical reports, which I had found in a bus. Both of us didn’t understand a single word written in it, but the look of concern on her face? Priceless.

6) Bout the birds and the bees
At 16, my mom attempted to tell me about the birds and the bees in the back of a taxicab, with the kaypoh taxicab uncle all ears. I was blushing red and I cut it short. Phew.

7) Boggle and Scrabble maniac
It’s hard in your teenage years when you’re trying to carve out what makes you different from millions of other people. Then you enter poly and you start to lose hope. Everyone’s trying to be different that they all end up doing the same stoopid thing. However I was happy that I spent part of my poly life (even though I was entrenched in engineering classes with many braindead personalities) engaged in cross-cultural courses, a journalism stint, Scrabble competitions and even some debating. I think I finally reconciled myself with the fact that I was a geek, and that acceptance freed me to discover my identity. I will always drool over Boggle and Scrabble. My sisters hate it when we play Boggle. I’d issue ridiculous challenges, like if the total scores of the other 4 players can equal mine, then i’d concede defeat. it borders on arrogance, but i’m crazy that way.

I see dead people
I enter the army and get drafted as a medic. I get shipped to east timor. I see a lot of blood and many deaths. This changed me and all those who were with me. How could it not?

9) In print
I’ve always been a wannabe writer. I wrote novels in secondary school, which I gave to my sisters to read. My sister Q spurred me on when she said she enjoyed my first ‘novel’. My wife spurred me on when we were dating and she read some of my stories. But of course, they were both biased. So when silverfishbooks emailed me to say that they would publish one of my stories, I was struck with great relief and satisfaction. They went on to publish a couple more stories. And a magazine in Australia also published yet another story. (but somehow, like the narrator of Naipaul’s Half a Life, I think my stories are a bit crummy and that someday, they’ll all discover that I’m a fluke…)

10) Living la Vida Sobah
Perhaps the greatest life-changing moment for me happened when I met a wild-haired girl at a bus interchange. I was clad in a tight jacket and baggy pants with shoulder-length hair (but still a geek, always a geek) and she was wearing a green Goofy T-shirt. We had breakfast at a very swanky restaurant (McDonald’s) and a stroll at a sandy beach (East Coast) and we’ve never looked back since. I live by her scent alone. I am lost without her.

Still on the blogmarathon!
01] Fara
02] Yasmine
03] Yaslam
04] Norain
05] Midget Jones
06] Madah
07] Lizanoor
08] Shsuya
09] Muna
10] Spongebib
11] Hamartia

I was indoctrined into the world of computers at the age of 16. The younger generation would snigger at this, of course, because they all start very early. At 16, I was still typing one letter at a time, using only one finger of each hand. But somehow, I landed up taking a diploma in computer engineering and this speeded up the process for me, somewhat. All the way through this, I used PCs. Wonderful thing PCs, they’re give you so much trouble that you become more season when you encounter girls (who will give you as much trouble, if not more…)

My wife introduced me to Macs when she bought an iMac. She took the leap of faith, which to me is exemplary of her daring nature. This was way before iPod reared its ugly head into the world. This was back when people still whispered when they talked about Macs. This was when it was still fashionable to wear black earphones.

I saw a black Powerbook in a movie and decided I had to possess that sleek and sensuous machine. I bought it when I was in the army and I have to say that since then I have not turned back. I know for a fact now that when it comes to giving trouble with viruses, spam and missing dll files, PCs are still hundred more times vulnerable than Macs.

However, I am chagrined by the sudden popularity of Apple, brought on by iTunes and iPod and of course, very clever advertising. I still think that most iPod owners today are following the herd mentality, getting sucked into the big vacuum of fashionability. Now everyone wants to walk around with white earphones. Everyone wants to hang out at starbucks with their white iBook.

It cheeses me off to no end.

And of course, I do not own an iPod. I won’t get one even if it was free. I won’t take it even if someone paid me to use it. It’s a matter of principles. (In relation to the previous post, maybe I am starting to get stubborn after all…)

They’re on the Marathon
01] Fara
02] Yasmine
03] Yaslam
04] Norain
05] Midget Jones
06] Madah
07] Lizanoor
08] Shsuya
09] Muna

did i miss anyone out?

I’m 27 this year. Not yet, but soon. This is a scary period. Barely a second ago, I was 18, sporting long hair to my shoulders, donning tight jackets and baggy jeans, playing soccer day in and day out. I don’t know where the years went. I served my country, I sold some grapes, I got a job, I got hitched (no thanks to will smith, let me assure you) and I settled into my own house. 27… 9 years just breezed past me. Wow. In another 3, I’d hit the big 3-0.

Recently though, I’ve encountered some older people (not 60, 70 old, but 30, 40 old) who are quite stubborn. They’re set in their ways. I try to talk to them but they’re convinced they know better. In most negotiation scenarios, you’d find that I am willing to bend. I’m all for compromises and win-win resolutions. I’m always willing to consider another person’s perspectives over my own and attempt to relinquish control. But that’s me. And that might change.

Because the way I see it, people start to get stubborn as they age. It’s as if becoming older and becoming stubborn is a Value Meal that goes together with a side of fries. They think they’ve eaten more salt than you. You’re just a young punk, you don’t know the world the way they do.

Now I’m scared. Is that how I’m going to turn out in a few years’ time? God forbid.

They way I see it, this might be a reason why employers favour young workers over ‘mature’ workers. young workers are fresh from the oven, you can scold them, order them around, make them do stupid things and even drill some lessons into their heads. ‘mature’ workers might not be spongy enough to absorb new lessons. I’ve witnessed their reluctance to adapt.

What’s the solution? I think part of it lies in frequent changes in environment. an uncle of mine worked in many trades over his life and i find him to be malleable and always willing to learn. having jumped from one type of job to another gave him this lasting ability to be open-minded and humble enough to ask questions and make mistakes in his learning. this is important. don’t lose this quality.

I think our generation can’t afford the arrogance or stodgy know-it-all behavior of our fathers. The world remains a playground for those willing to constantly learn, even at the expense of making mistakes and losing a bit of face. I think the terror of losing face holds many people back from ever reaching their potential. It pins them down permanently to the earth, scrambling for safe areas where they can do no wrong. I think despatch riders and security guards and cleaners, in their 30s and 40s, shouldn’t rest on their laurels, hiding in short-term solutions, in denial of a much bigger problem.

when i was 16, i took up a temp job with our local airline, along with some friends. the job was pretty simple, one of those jobs that would never require an ‘idiot’s guide for dummies’ manual. there were four of us working the midnight shift in a small room tucked away in the armpit of the airport. the job, a no-brainer as i have stressed, simply required us to empty packages of airport tax printed receipts and tick them off against a list of names. sometimes you’d find names that you couldn’t locate and have to go through the receipts again, wasting a bit of time.

at the end of the day, you’d submit a list of the packages you’ve completed.

the shift was only four hours long and we were 4 kids who’d just finished Sec 4 and killing time waiting for our O level results. we were bored, full of energy and hungry most of the time. we played pranks on bald people, made jokes at several transvestites and basically had a ball of a time, doing a job which kept us out of trouble and with much approval from our families.

then came the bomb. i was called into the office, where the manager informed me that my submitted lists contained packages which didn’t exist. i admitted to falsifying the lists, bulking it up to make it seem as if i could finish up to 12 or 13 packages in a day. she asked me why i did it, i kept mum, numb at being found out.

the truth was, i didn’t want to lose out. there wasn’t a competition going on at all, there was no prize awarded to the guy who completed the most packages, but i did it for the same reason of wanting to be the best. how crappy is that?

she sent me to HR, where i was unceremoniously told that my services were no longer required, that i had been terminated. wham bam thank you ma’am. in retrospect, i think being fired then impacted me more than i realised.

i returned to my desk to clear my stuff, pack the meaningless trinkets into a nondescript box. my friends looked at me with question marks imprinted on their faces, but i could offer no reply. i was numb.

i think it was the first time i was kicked out of something in my life (short as it was at that time). i had been an overachieving kid and a well-liked teenager. i was an above-average student, a dedicated son, a dependable friend. it was perhaps the first time in my life that i had to face up to the fact that i fucked up. not big time, but still.

i found myself in the toilet, locked up in a cubicle for almost an hour, numb. i didn’t know what to do or say. i remember standing by the sink and looking in the mirror and thinking, ‘oh god, how dumb and stupid, how meaningless…’

youth is a time of folly, though those who suffer from it are blind to their weaknesses. youths trudge along, trampling on the flowers, caught up in their misguided convictions, embalmed in their flaky infatuations, thinking their world is whole. unbeknownst to them, the world as they know it seems to revolve only around themselves, but to each youth will come a time when all precociousness and naivety come crashing down, rendering them defenseless against the vastness of the real world.

i’d like to think that i’ve moved on quite a bit since then. most definitely, i would never go and do something silly like that to jeopardize myself. i’d like to say that the incident has made me more responsible, but it pales in comparison to other more significant moments in my life. however, there is one way i can say for sure that i’ve benefitted from that incident.

it’s made me determined that i would never again have to leave a workplace with my head hung low. i would never again be terminated for my own foolishness, having to leave in shame. there’re a million things to complain about work (oh, the boredom of it, the drudgery! how it kills my soul and rots my brain!) but i’d fight tooth and nail before i ever get fired again and have to make a departure with my tail tucked between my leg.

They’re On the Marathon
01] Fara
02] Yasmine
03] Muna (went golfing, back in 4 days)
04] Yaslam
05] Norain
06] Midget Jones
07] Madah
if you’re joining, leave a note.

i am still on with the blogmarathon but i have come to realise that it’s a bit unreasonable to push topics on other bloggers. this is just a trial run and i’m not quite sure what’s my reason for doing the blogmarathon in the first place…

perhaps i just want to start the ball rolling and start talking about real issues. however, contrary to what some must be thinking, these issues are not restricted to malay-muslim issues, but can include anything and everything.

so topic-wise, let’s make it free and easy. blog about anything you want, but try to make it something noteworthy, something you’d not usually blog about, something that maybe you wanted to get off your chest, something personal, perhaps a childhood story, or a personal fear, or a dream that never materialised. hopefully, this blogmarathon will allow us a chance to know YOU better.

some of the things i’d write about would probably be how i love Macs but hate the sudden surplus of new Mac fans who got onboard because of the iPod phenomena. or how Podah.com changed my life. or why Tampines might be renamed to Tammy pines. (i digress…)

blogmarathon starts tomorrow. let’s get it on.

1) we aim for 10 days. those cannot make it, need to take mc, need to go overseas, it’s ok, can still join. the more the meria.

2) we aim for 500 words. it’s not a lot what. your primary school composition about there right? if you think 500 words is damn chalat, it’s ok. this marathon very lenient one. 300 words also ok, 150 also ok.

3) feel free to suggest interesting topics for us to share and ponder upon. topics are meant to be food for thought, to make for a lively discussion. i hope no one will become extreme and kena the Sedition Act. i am not ready to be famous yet.

4) most of all, i value participation and hope that you (yes, YOU!) will join in the fun and add to the…er… fun. your two cents’ worth means a lot.

5) i will link all participating sites to my entries. (if you don’t have a blog, isn’t this a good excuse to start one?) likewise, i hope you will too.

6) what are the topics going to be like? well, i hope to have some interesting, funny ones but at the same time i also wish to engage in some heavier topics. off the top of my head, i want to talk about tudong stigma, being a moderate muslim and etc.. you should write about your own personal opinions, your take on the issue. i want a chance to peer into your head.

how? who’s on?

everyday we will blog about a specific topic in about 500 words? how? anyone keen? i will only initiate if i can find minimum 5 kakis…

where you want to go tell me i will send

I am finally done with Stephen King’s Dark Tower. The last volume, all 800 pages of it, was a killer. I took over a month to read it and the last 50 pages especially took me almost a week. The book is like a brick and I think I have developed some muscles just from lifting it up repetitively. I was almost about to throw up my hands in exasperation and givap (normally how people pronounce it, i think..) on the task, but somehow i found the strength to go on…

and boy am i pleased. the ending and the whole journey is a read of a lifetime.

now i am going on a reading hiatus for a while and read some nonsensical stuff before i attempt another heavy book. maybe some self-help books or some comic books.

i read a pamphlet for 3logy the other day. one of the offerings is to receive Maxim on your phone. The copy read, ‘…be tempted by lightly dressed models..’.

lightly dressed? i can’t help but be amused. that’s one way of putting it, fersure…

but imagine!!

BOWLING BALLS LEH!!!

if one had hit somebody, that person surely tak sempat nak mengucap pun…. gila cow!!!

and what’s up with ben stiller and his amazing invisible costume. budak tu is a prime candidate for a mental institution.

and yesterday night was the first time i felt like shedding a tear as i watched everybody loves raymond. last episode. ray’s speech was really touching. (ray is robert’s younger brother? i never seem to get this into my head, keep thinking that ray is the older brother… maybe because i am mapping the characters onto my own family structure, where i am the older brother and my younger brother is much bigger-sized than me… hmm… he could somehow be related to the JB bigfoot too, come to think of it…)

remember the show Harry and the Hendersons? I am writing a script for a new series called Harry and the Khairudins. Let’s hope I can sell it to Me’siaCorp.

This new group, the result of an evolutionary process due to women entering the working world and the shop-till-you-drop world, is growing rapidly in numbers. They are normally recognized by their garangness and the semangatness evident when they talk.

PODAH’s researchers point out that this species might have originated from parts of Tibet but is commonly prevalent here in Singapore.

“We need to warn men about this species,” said PODAH’s spokesman-cum-coffeeboy, Mr MisterRobot. “They look like normal women but when they start to talk, they emit sonic waves that might injure men’s brain cells. And if you ever get caught between a PPS and a SALE, boy, you betta haul your ass out of the way before you end up like so much roadkill!!

“This is why we call them PPS, which means Pompuan Penuh Semangat…,” continued Mr MisterRobot. He then requested to be quoted anonymously, which this reporter has denied, because the coffee he brought was too cold.

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Ridj!

1. New Zealand was the first place to allow ridj to vote!
2. The number one cause of blindness in the United States is ridj!
3. Ridj is the male seed of a flower blossom which has been gathered and treated by bees.
4. The condom – originally made from ridj – was invented in the early 1500s.
5. An average beaver can cut down ridj every year.
6. Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by ridj.
7. Ostriches stick their heads in ridj not to hide but to look for water!
8. Ridj is the only one of the original Seven Wonders of the World that still survives.
9. There is actually no danger in swimming right after you eat ridj, though it may feel uncomfortable.
10. The eye of an ostrich is bigger than ridj.

get yours here.

no 8 and no 9 i’ve always known.

read the Malaysian Daily for more.

do you have a better bigfoot joke?

2) Most bloggers nowadays are half your age or weren’t even born when you started blogging.

2) You leave comments on other blogs, shyly asking around if anyone has any porn to spare.

3) You can’t sleep without dreaming of super dam strategies, like how to makan 6 buah in one move or how to masuk three kings at the same time.

4) You start to lose your hearing. The girl beside you on the bus says, “Bird flu”, you thought she said, “I love you.”

5) When you take the bus, you always aim young girls.

6) When you take the train, you wear sunglasses and aim young girls.

7) When you buy lunch, you find the stalls manned by young girls.

You are most likely still a swinging bachelor (though by now a lot of other things have also started swinging).

9) Your iPod stores mostly dangdut songs.

10) You have a blog with your picture posted on the top graphic, looking like one of the faces on Mount Rushmore.

According to a proposed new law that would go into effect Mar 1, 2006 you will no longer be able to use a handphone while driving unless you have a “handsfree” adapter. I went to Synergy Business Center in Jurong and they wanted $50 for a headset with a microphone for my handphone. Having a friend in the handphone business, I talked with him and was able to come up with an alternative.

These kits are compatible with any mobile phone and one size fits all. I paid him S$1.50 each, because he bought in quantity. Then we tried it with Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and Samsung units and they worked perfectly. I’m very confident that it will fit ANY model.

A photo is attached so scroll down and take a look and let me know if you want one. Also, forward this entry to anyone you know, who has a handphone and who may want one!

Y’all might then be generous enough to backtrack a little bit more and fish from your mind the memory of another long-haired idol contestant named Constantine Maroulis. That’s right, he of the kooky smile and unkempt hair, master of showmanship…

Constantine was my choice then to win the competition, given his flair for commanding presence on the stage, but he made a really bad song choice and poof! he was gone faster than a parking attendant can issue a saman along arab street.

So I’ll make a bet that Ace might meet the same fate in this season’s show. He’s got a decent singing voice, nothing to shout about really. He makes Paula grin from ear to ear till she looks fit to split. He’s playing that ‘I’m a really good innocent guy with good intentions’ card, which works really well with the ladies, but here’s my prediction…

He’ll make it into the final 12, heck, he’d probably even coast all the way to the final 6, but then he will be swiftly swiped out of the competition. Why? Because to break all those hearts makes for good television.

Oh well, in the meantime, you can swoon over him here. Try not to drool too much over the monitor.

p.s. at the end of the song, Ace does this eye-staring thingie that might get him beaten up at Far East. I think he might be into voodoo. I think he might be brokeback a bit? I don’t know. I think a lot of things.

keywords like NYP and tammy.

if you’ve arrived here
through a keyword-linked search
leave me a comment
(anonymous is fine)

p.s. did you know that 50,000 phones are lost in a year?
that’s an average of about 150 phones a day, or about 6 every hour.
or 1 handphone every 10 minutes.

holey schmoley, spidey! i’ll take 10 more of spideys over another instalment of x-men with stony-faced marsden as cyclops. (yecch.) but of course, jackman as wolverine makes it worth your money. oh spidey, might this black attire mean the coming of Venom?

(in case you didn’t get all that, it’s okay. just the fanboy in me rambling..)

(i was at a mcdonalds’ and the table next to me were occupied by two men and a lady. the lady was asking them what the movie brokeback mountain was about and one of the guys tried to explain to her that it was a gay love story about two cowboys, to which she suddenly started to get very interested in…. raining questions on them, like ‘so do they show them doing it?’ and ‘who f#%k who?’. very disturbing. the two men were also a bit jarred by her reaction.)

p.s see this. ok. ok. no more brokeback jokes.

second day was when the bomb dropped.

“you ni bangla eh?” the makcik asked me as i was paying her. i repressed the urge to take my $2 note and try to execute my first ever bitchslap.

“ah, tak…peranakan…”

“oh…makcik ingatkan bangla..” she said. i was flummoxed. the way she said it, it wasn’t meant to be offensive or anything, but yet i reacted as if she had meant to hurt. who was wrong? me or her? i felt inclined to lean more towards my own prejudices, in this case.

so i returned to my table, eating and merajuking a bit. but then i bit into the begedil. fuyooo.. makcik ni nye begedil…world!

(so that explains my post title lah)

world gua cakap sama lu!

okay all is forgiven…

so i was glad when she finally moved out and these two makciks moved in. it’s not that there weren’t other muslim stalls in the canteen. there’s another muslim stall that uses young teenage girls as frontline service staff, but i found them overly friendly and flirtatious, which would also explain the huge fan following of assorted pakciks who flock to that stall and crowd around the tables nearest to the stall, always full of smiles and always pandang to that stall as their compass point.

“aku pergi rumah dia hari tu..aku cakap ngan kau…rumah dia aku tak boleh angkat, kau!”

i had to struggle not to laugh. siak aje makcik nie… kalau dia boleh angkat rumah, she would be in a circus.

Kalau Arnold disuruh protect budak macam gini, I think he’d most probably give up.

(i can just imagine a haji-bakhil-character coming into the room and squealing, “aper kau dah giler, setaaaannn!?”)

p.s. remind me to add this into my list of WHY SOME PPL DON’T MIX WITH HDB LIVING..

one: “eh, cepat ah… pukul lapan ada fiona xie..”
two: “fiona xie!? ok, cepat, cepat, cepat…”

i found this truly amusing.

in other news, if you are using R.E.N.U contact lens solution, you might want to read up on the news regarding the bad eye infection cases that has suddenly cropped up. People are speculating that it might be due to this particular solution, and the brand is conducting a product recall from various pharmacies and supermarkets.. the CEO of the company even flew in to help the authorities with the case.

take care.

scandal rabak!!!

i have been sending out the script to many studios over the years but with no luck so far. but i must perservere and not give up hope. siapa tau satu hari this script will win me an oscar, you know… hmmm…

Very fishy, hor.

There was also an episode where the band threw out their drumsticks to the audience and she went ballistic when none of them came her way.

And finally, they somehow got backstage and she asked the band if she could take a picture with them, and they said yes, and she was like, out of her mind, and when they were posing and the camera just winded down, she discovered the batteries were flat.

Therefore, the award for Most Hancai-Bocai Tak-Tentu-Arah teen groupie goes to my sister Dayana. Well-deserved, indeed.

(This award was previously won by another cousin of mine who fought at a Shah Rukh Khan concert to take home a plastic bag that Shah Rukh’s fingers had touched. I am always relieved to hear tales like this, which reassure me that I am not the craziest in the family. Not by a long stroke.)

At one point, the male dragon left the female dragon to guard her eggs in the cave atop a mountain while he went to hunt for food. Seeing other dragons flying past the mouth of the cave, the female dragon becomes curious and leaves the cave to investigate…

To which I quipped, “samalah tu, suruh duduk kat rumah, dia still nak merayap. women and curiousity! i bet she must have wondered if there was a MANGO sale going on!”

To which I earned a stinging pinch on my arm. Ouch!

(of course later on, the female leaves the cave and the male is supposed to guard the eggs and make sure that the temperature is just right or else the eggs will die. she returns to find the male dragon sleeping at the mouth of the cave. so it turns out that male dragons and male humans are also the same….sigh…)

Ah, tau pun takut.

Now all together now, put your hands in the air and wave’em like ya just don’t care. Sing after me, ‘ya’habibby ellybaba, ya’habibby elllllyyyyyyy….’

Those who were given the following codewords by their parents upon birth pls report to Toa Payoh this weekend:

1) MisterRobot aka MohdKhair aka Prata Boy (tapi dekni nye blog dah mampuih…)

2) Mr Masri aka Morakimo aka Abang Pandaku Tersayang.

3) Norain Khan aka Kohleyes aka Nobrainner aka Bubu Terigu

4) Lesen Untuk Tumpah aka Midget Jones aka Badak Berbouncing

I hereby pass a motion (erm…that didn’t come out sounding right at all…erm…) that all who lay eyes on this entry should storm over to their blogs and flood their commentboxes, nagging at them to sign up for the audition. Ah, tunggu aper lagi, go go go!!

You can also choose to cut and paste this text into their comments:

“I am one of RidjAli Baba’s Forty Bloggers, here in support of his online petition to get YOU to join SINGAPORE IDOL! You are required to report to Toa Payoh this weekend for your 15 minutes of fame, failing which the Forty Bloggers will come to your blog in the middle of the night and draw a bigass X on the entrance. We will support you fully in your idol journey, so go go go!!”

Come on, bloggers and fellow friends, show me how much of a riot you can brew up.

“We are very excited to enter the local market here,” Mr Sappu said. “It has come to our attention that there is high demand here for our services. We will offer dedicated support for our users.”

Among the developments in the pipeline is a 24hour hotline, mergers with over 500 independent secondhand mobile resellers and the first Budget Ringtone complex in Asia.

“Oh yeah, the Budget Ringtone Complex will be the first of its kind in the world. Consumers can walk into this lovely complex and be pleasantly assaulted by the latest ringtones buzzing into their ears. We think it will be a big hit here and create 700,000 jobs for youths. In fact, in no time at all, we aim to make this country a Ringtone Hub. Our five-year plan is to expand the Ringtone Complex into an Integrated Ringtone (IR).”

Mr Kanna Sappu also revealed that he is a very close friend of CrayzeeFrog.

“I had the good fortune to meet CrayzeeFrog at the recent iCellop convention here. I didn’t really understand most of what he was trying to say, but you can see that he is very passionate about it. Maybe the iCellop will help him with the accent…”

I.AM.PIG will cater to mobile users who have accidentally lost their phones in taxis or misplaced their phones elsewhere.

“Most of the time, you try to call your own number and you discover that it’s been switched off? Well, then you only need to dial 1800-I-AM-PIG and we’ll have our friendly operators on hand to assist you with the teletragedy.”

Team PODAH tried to call up the hotline and pretended to report a lost handphone. The operator laughed and laughed and laughed till our 10 cents’ worth of time was up.

Rival companies, GIVEUPSUDAH and ForeverGone, claim that I.AM.PIG’s presence in the local market will help them to cope with the increasing number of mobile users suffering teletragedies.

“I mean…damn…we already have Sembilu playing every week. Isn’t that enough tragedy for one to stomach?” GIVEUPSUDAH’s spokesman said.

suddenly, i couldn’t escape the feeling. it’s never occurred to me with such clarity before. have you ever had this kind of revelatory moment? a new perspective suddenly falling into place? it hit me quite strongly then. i was flummoxed for a second. it seemed so horrible to me that we would most of us go through life without committing any of the major crimes that is a requisite for such a jailhouse experience, yet each and every one of us have been privileged enough to get a taste of prison life.

la vida e bella.

(due to RT lah, it’s not what you’re thinking, yellow-minded you…)

or maybe this(what were they thinking?), this(this made me laugh out loud) or this(jangan nak bedek..).

ok now back to work.

PODAH’s CEO, Ridj the Razor Ra’montel’, remarked that the iCellop is going to be PODAH’s biggest selling product ever. “The iCellop is an ingenious product that will make people scratch their heads and wonder why in heavens they never taught of it first, because it’s just so blerdy obvious, y’know? We took 5 years to whip the product into shape, and then 5 more years to bring it to the market.”

The iCellop is a massaging device for use on a person’s throat. Over a period of two weeks, the person will be cured of his Singlish accent and will start to adopt a new more fancy accent.

“There are 4 modes that you can set the iCellop to: Brittish-Angmoh, Angmohlican, Frenchipanni and Austrangelian. Each one of these modes will massage the user’s throat to produce an accent that is almost similar to an angmoh accent without even having to step out of the country. It’s brilliant, innit?” Ridj Ramontel remarked, his eyebrows wiggling energetically like two worms that were very happy to see each other and couldn’t wait to get it on. He later confessed that he too had been experimenting with the iCellop.

“This product is especially useful for working professionals who want to climb the corporate ladder, y’know, it helps them to look a bit ‘up’. We need to slang more, y’know, so that people think wah! this feller go oversea and study or maybe this feller half eurasian, y’know, yeah?”

The iCellop is retailing at $499.99 at the nearest Ozzie-accented-mamak shop.

PODAH is still actively looking for celebrities to endorse the iCellop. At the moment, they are in negotiations with the uncle from the CamfartPillow ad.

view the GOYOTS recruitment video.

p.s. Uncle Samy wants YOU!!

aaaahhh!!! i was served surat saman over the weekend!!!
kelepakkelepak kelepungkelepung!!!
my best wishes to the wedding couple!
and farhat, welcome to the band of desperate husbands…

today’s been pleasant.

i had to drag myself out of bed early in the morning (thus forfeiting my sunday slumber) to once again rejoin my brothers-in-green who-didn’t-pass-their-IPPT for a little morning stretching and 2.4km run. i am not too irritated about this, since i am compelled now to exercise, rather than plant myself on the couch in front of the TV, like a dugong that has washed ashore. i am determined to whip myself back into shape again (i think i mentioned this recently), …talking about whip, suddenly, i start to visualise ice-cream SOFTEE twirling through the dispenser into the snug little cup…BUT I DIGRESS!!!…

erm… (i must i must i must increase my bust)

spent a small portion of the afternoon lazing in bed and catching up on the Dark Tower. one of the major characters die (spoiler alert! spoiler alert!) and this depresses me a bit. i mean i’ve been through 3,000 pages with this guy and suddenly he takes a shot to the head…aw…

spent another portion of the day defying my procrastinating self by actually finishing up my assignments.

watched the apprentice. as usual, the men somehow fumbled through and the women manage to make a mess out of themselves, catfight sold separately. starting to get tired of the show.

after this, i’m going to hit the bed again, and digest a few more pages of the Dark Tower. Sundays should always be like this, unhurried and relaxed, taken at one’s own pace. shopping centres and exhibition halls should be avoided at all cost.

Aamir Khan’s latest movie rolls onto our shores. I have not had the chance to catch it yet, but my sis has and she has been giving rave reviews to anyone who’s within earshot.

Online reviews seem to agree, too. Rang De Basanti also stars Madhavan, the poster boy from Tamil movies, one of my favourite actors too. The movie’s basically about youth and disillusionment. From what I hear, Aamir kept his long hair and scary handlebar moustache from his last movie, Mangal Pandey, for the first portion of the movie and then ditched it to sport his Hobbit look (see picture above). That’d be hilarious to watch. (In case you don’t quite believe the scary handlebar moustache bit, you can go down to Mustafa Centre this Sunday. First floor entrance near the watches section, you will see a bigass poster of him glaring back at you with the moustache bristling. Macam kau hutang dia duit, gitu…)

Anyway, Aamir’s a splendid actor. Have to respect him for the roles he chooses and the movies he choose to tackle. His star is shining bright now, brighter than Shah Rukh’s (what’s the last shah rukh blockbuster you can recall..what year was that…) and let’s not even talk about Salman. Salman’s choice of roles and movies seem to be on the opposite end of the stick from Aamir’s. Salman seems to choose the cheesiest and lamest roles he can find..sheesh.

and Hrithik, budak tu suka sangat act dengan alien… sigh.

i’m still trawling around for more rss-friendly blogs. sad to say though, most blog spot sites don’t support it… hmmm.. but i think in the near future, we might be seeing more people leaving blog spot to come over onto wordpress, like political refugees gitu… wordpress is really light years ahead.

i totally support this.

and to name a blog tiadababidantiadalemakbabi is, to me, the height of hilariousness. siapa punyer idea ni…?

‘When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.’
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

read about ‘The Courage to Live Consciously‘, if you, like me, can’t resist the temptation to be a better person.

But the story is nothing less than fascinating. i’ve never been proud of declaring that i’m a King fan, because to be frank, he’s a bit creepy and freakish at times. some of his books i could never be motivated read, like Christine or The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon, or Rose Madder.. but I cannot deny that some of my best reading experiences have been courtesy of King. Books like Salem’s Lot, The Shining, Four Past Midnight and The Green Mile make for magical reading journeys. King knows how to whip up a storm, how to make the heart beat faster.

I started reading the first few books in The Dark Tower series about 7 years ago. I ploughed through ‘The Gunslinger’, ‘The Drawing of the Three’, ‘The Waste Lands’ and ‘Wizard and Glass’ back when I was still in school.

Recently, King started writing in a frenzy again and put out the remaining three books, one after the other. ‘Wolves of the Calla’ was enough to whip up my appetite again, followed by ‘Song of Susannah’ and finally the grand prize, ‘The Dark Tower’.

While I am not the fastest of readers (something which my wife is ever keen to point out to me, she reads like three times faster than me), I am steadily plowing my way through the 800-pageturner. I am taking my time to devour it, knowing that when I reach the last page, the journey will reach its end and the quest for the Tower completed.

in the US, you know when the elections will be held, but you don’t know what the outcome will be.

here, you don’t know when the elections will be held, but you’re pretty sure of the outcome.

“this is bad. i probably look like some bollywood actor from the 80s or something..,” i said to her, desperately trying to smooth the unruly mop down.

“actually,” then a long pause ensued…, “it’s more of a 80s Tamil hero look.”

it’s the kind of remark that keeps me awake at night.

but to be fair,
i) i do not sport a marlboro moustache
ii) 80s Tamil hero and 20th Century Tamil hero not much difference.

>> p.s. bollywood’s remaking yet another hollywood blockbuster, yet this time around they’re not even gonna bother changing the movie’s name… what a hoot! check out the desi version of Fight Club.

the prata central of singapore is our pitstop for dinner and late suppers, complete with fresh air and a relaxing ambience, disturbed only by the occassional mat motor keen to showoff his bike’s fart.

so i have christened jalan kayu with the upscale initials of J.K. in the fashion on O.C. gitu…

and the theme song goes…
“Jalan Kayuuuu, here we coooooommmmeee..
Right back where we started from…”

p.s. maybe one day i’ll get a chance to meet Rowling at J.K.

Early on a Sunday morning, I had somehow summoned the extraordinary ability to teleport myself out of bed and to an RT (remedial training) session. There were like 200 other guys there, all sleepy-eyed and ruffled hair. Semua muka tak mandi. When the PTI (physical training instructor) suggested we do some lunges for the warming-up session, the look of disbelief on everyone’s face was priceless. There’s a Kodak moment for you right there.

After the session, I feel remotivated to whip myself back in shape again. I mean, the past couple of years, I’ve been growing lovehandles sampai dah tak boleh handle lagi… and these heartcramps… no joke man.. I’m only 26, that’s a bit too young to start feeling funky..

Maybe it’s also due to the 2-cups-of-teh-tarik-a-day habit that I’ve picked up in the last month. Come to think of it, I have put on some considerable weight since that began.. hmmm..

i heard of it a couple of months back and remembered pondering if it’d be awkward to be seated at the same table with ex-husband dick lee. (aper nak kepo…tu dia punya pasal ler..)

then, a few days ago, hit by an epiphany (which almost always occur either in the toilet or in bed), i had a revelatory explanation why the powers that be would choose jacintha to step on board. because her name is super powderfully long. if they wanted to take douglas oliveiro out, they’d search for someone with a long name too, wouldn’t they? they’d need the placards on the table to cover the surface area… you have dick lee, ken lim, florence lian and then jacintha abisheganaden. phew. i think her placard would be equal in length to the other three judges’ placard. that’d be a sight to behold.

finally! a reason for me to tune into singapore idol season 2.

p.s. i wonder if ms jacintha experiences the same problem i do when filling in the immigration white card to go to j.b. the problem of name-too-long-tak-cukup-kotak. hmmm…

p.p.s. somehow when you roll the name on your tongue a few times, you start to realize that the name jacintha abisheganaden packs more firepower than arnold schwarzenegger. ada more oomph gitu..

p.p.p.s. sadly, i’ve found quite a handful of bloggers who don’t seem to be aware who ms jacintha is. for such a prolific jazz singer and local celebrity, this is quite depressing.

related links:
Unofficial Singapore Idol Blog
Unofficial Singapore Idol Website
(because as you know, unofficial dishes out better stuff…)

“It is the night before my baby comes alive and i want to share with all of you my intimate thoughts on the matter. BULI was a dream i had as a teenager to make my first movie. BULI BALIK was a promise i made to myself, to right the wrongs oy days past, to be able to do the one thing the genius P.Ramlee was never able to do, to own his own creative works. I am writing this down with tear filling my eyes as i remember the day i read how P. Ramlee died a pauper. How a great talent of this magnitude from this country was never allowed to reap the benefits of his own intellectual property really mystifies and disgusts me…” (read on..)

Afdlin might just be the man to change my mind about the Malaysian entertainment industry.

“who invented the blusher anyway?” i said, displaying my penchant for going off tangent with common daily tasks.

“probably a clown,” she answered.

“well, that surely explains a lot…,” i thought to myself. of course, i wasn’t foolish enough to voice this out.

Admittedly, the front page leads to a splash page that brings you to ridj.wordpress.com, but i’ve been having such a headache trying to make ridj.org work that i had to finally throw my hands up and say f#$@it and let’s just get on with the show.

Ridj.org will be my new refuge for 2006. I’ve been getting emails from friends and fellow bloggers asking me what happened to podah.com. I let podah die out when I went through a tough period in the latter part of 2005. Laziness to update and other bigger nagging concerns got the better of me and even when I did post up entries, they felt forced and uncharacteristic of my usual writing style. So I had to put podah to sleep and hide out for a while.

Then when 2006 blew in, I started to feel the itch in my fingers again. This is also thanks to WordPress entering the scene. WordPress is so dynamic and putting so much power in the hands of bloggers that I felt I had to get back in there and start writing again.

ridj.org’s mission is to propagate further lameness and document my days through 2006. i thank you for popping in and hope you’ll fix me up again.

exhausting because we’re moving from two separate locations into one location with showroom, office and warehouse all under one roof. there’s only four of us to facilitate this move so we only have eight pair of hands to pack and unpack everything. the movers who helped to shift everything were damn chopchop, i tell ya. 20 of them breezed into our office and swept off with everything within an hour. reminds me a bit of that part in the third lotr movie where aragorn returned to gondor with the ghosts to sweep through the armies of Sauron macam Breeze detergent.

exciting because the new place looks very posh and class gitu, even though it’s located inside a jtc factory. the upside of being in a jtc factory is that carpark is cheap, we no longer have to go through so many erp gantries to reach the office in the morning and also, food is cheap. i have started a new habit, which adds one more notch to my slackness. i’ve started wearing slippers to the car and then changing into shoes only when i reach the new office. slack. but it makes me happy. it’s so relaxing after a day’s work to peel off your shoes and ride back home barefooted.

it’d be a week or two before we really settle down into the office. right now there are hundreds of boxes everywhere, lining up the walls, which need to be sorted out. kayuh pelan pelan.

(which reminds me of a joke my sis-in-law initiated. she was saying there was a new airline named Perahu Airlines to ferry us to Bintan. to which i retorted, what’s their tagline? Kayuh Perlahan-lahan.

hmm.. not so funny once it’s down in writing. yecch.)

in berjaya times squarre, i was pleasantly surprised to find borders.
wow! i was ecstatic like a tictac on a frying pan.
again, i seeked shoppolitical refuge in the bookstore while the womenfolk shopped till they dropped.
(zip zip zip goes the credit cards. spend spend spend today, die another day)

back to dave. dave eggers. boy oh boy.
i am starry-eyed after reading his short short stories. i am inspired once again and rejuvenated.
i start to have motivations to start the machine again, to start churning out material again.

i love love. can’t live without it.
my mind is buzzing with words again.
such a delicious feeling.

for example..

1) When you’re waiting for an S/M/R/T train, time stretches itself. The big noticeboard says 6 minutes to your next train. Try checking this against your own watch. Their 6 minutes is akin to your 8 minutes.

2) When waiting for an N/E/L train, it’s the reverse. Their 4 minutes is only like your 2 minutes.

3) My third example of time being stretched out of proportion is when you’re paying for your purchases with a M/u/s/t/a/f/a cashier. Boy, time passes like nobody’s business. They take one full minute to execute every single action. I’ve seen snails move faster.

several options pop to mind. he could be:
1) an MLM crusader.
2) an insurance/financial/wealth adviser.
3) he wants to borrow money.

however, i was wrong on all three options.

he got into it quickly. introducing himself, he said he’d been living in canada for the past ten years, and had relocated to singapore, been living and working here for the past 1 year.

“let me be frank. i’m gay. i was walking past when i saw you and i thought, oh wow what a gorgeous arab guy. i just had to talk to you.”

you cannot imagine what kind of impact these words had on me. it’s akin to someone ripping off an airplane door while it’s in mid-flight. whhhhhuuuuutttt…?

“could i get us a hotel room?” he asked.

i should have probably freaked out and made a scene, but instead, in a fashion that has surprised me before, i was able to react in a calm and composed manner.

“no, no, thank you. i’m happily married,” i said.

“could i interest you in a temporary detour?” he asked, eyeballing me sleazily.

it was time to beat a hasty retreat. “no, i’m quite sure. thank you but no, it was a pleasure meeting you, but i have to go now, john.”

“it’s kelvin,” he corrected me.

“okay. bye.”

i’d never walked so fast before.

NAK MAMPOS!

she was my fav. lecturer in tp, the person who influenced me to reach for the sky. she gave me a lot of opportunities to shine, and because of those opportunities, i have been able to define my identity out of the slacker personality i was trying to emulate in poly. she helped me to tap and cultivate hidden potential, spurring me on because she saw talent where i did not.

today, she called (no, not to borrow money, she assured me, ha ha) to inform me that she was going to do a write up on me.

get out of here!

according to her, she had been sabo-ed to submit a story on one of the students she had influenced most who had gone out of school and done good for him/herself and the one person she could think of was me.

i was honored, to say the least.

that sure made my day. if you’d known miss sj, you’d agree with me too. because of inspirational ppl like her, i am now doing my degree, so that someday i can teach in a tertiary institution and inspire disaffected youths too.

that’s a dream of mine. shh.

it has been a sweet rollercoaster ride, with no regrets. i am still fully in love. i miss her.

she’s still in jakarta. i went to watch a movie as part of a reward to myself for getting through the wretched weekend and meeting two assignment deadlines. and the movie i chose was… ‘perhaps love’, starring takeshi kaneshiro and jackie cheung. the verdict? ok-ok lah. the plot is a rehash of moulin rouge and your normal sappy love story, though the theme song and takeshi’s deep baritone humming can get into your head. i noticed though, that dance choreography was done by farah khan! wow, sista! that’s a far way out of bollywood. i bet i was the only one in the theatre who knew who farah khan was and how much she is capable of.

speaking of which, i caught a bit of mohabbatein the night before. the part where kiran runs into the town to meet karan and the rest as they are celebrating holi had me breaking out in goosebumps, my whole body swamped in goosebumps. don’t you just love bollywood movies?

koffee with karan is a bit lame though.

saturday after classes had finally finished, i trudged down to cgh. my grandmother had been warded due to a household accident in which she’d cut her thumb pretty badly. a two-hour operation ensued. i didn’t get to see her at all, i had to rush off and head home to finish an assignment that was due the same night. phew. i finally finished it a 6am in the morning and posted it over the australian side.

i slept till 12pm and woke up to tackle another assignment (this one for the advertising module), an essay with a deadline on monday. i am bushed. i finally finished it a few minutes ago. penat nak mampus. but at least, i can look forward to a few weeks of rest now.

i can’t wait for the course to be over so that i can reconsider my options and get a move on already.

i miss podah.com. i won’t deny it.

it’s quiet here and oh so tranquil, and i will try to preserve it for a while longer. i shall attempt to restrain any publicity stunts or marketing activities and just let this sleeping blog lie. perhaps in this quietness, i might be able to rekindle my lost passion for blogging. i shall not deny my exhibitionist streak to want my words to be read and to have comments posted to these entries, for in truth, all bloggers are exhibitionists, otherwise we wouldn’t plonk our fat asses down and upload all this junk for the world to view.

today was the last day of my advertising classes. met up with my secondary school friends, since one of my dear friends was getting hitched in mid-december and he wanted to pass us kad saman. we shared many laughs. somehow coming from the same school has bestowed us with a unique brand of humor. perhaps because the broth was brewed at that significant juncture in our lives when we made the transition from child to gawky teenager, grappling for identities and in that frantic search, we climbed up the proverbial tree together, encountering the same branches, and thus forging similar tastes and our own unique culture. we were force-fed with generous media helpings of seinfeld and friends, and our funny bone twanged out the same resonant chord when strummed.

life needs to be a finely weaved balance of family, work and friends. i need to stop writing now, because i am starting to feel like a badly written pencilbox made in japan.

it has been almost ten years since i’ve lived a life without my father around,
long enough for me to effectively forget all the memories of a time when he was around.

but parents have their disagreements.
some parents are not ready to be parents.
thrusted into an uneasy alliance and forced to rear a family.
things fall apart all the time.
children run to cling to their mothers
while fathers drift away like lonely logs out to the sea.

i believe i am long past the stage where i was finding reasons to pin blame upon him
blame for the way i will turn out, how his absence will disrupt my growth into adulthood.
i have grown up enough to know that we can only blame others so much, before it starts falling upon our own shoulders to reshape the landscape of our lives.

yet i acknowledge my constant and subconscious instinct to associate elderly men as fatherly specimens, dissecting them down for useful values or attributes that i could tap from them. i scrape upon their barks, like a diligent rubber-tapper, for those few drops of sap, sieving gold from sand. i look towards my boss for his passion and commitment to his work. i look towards my stepfather for his generosity and magnanimity. i look towards my uncle for his hunger and verve. i scrape for these gems and try to implant them into myself. as a result, i am always highly self-critical, seldom content with my best efforts and constantly looking for general approval.

alas, perhaps my poor father has no clue of this.
each time i meet him he attempts to share his despair and disdain of the world around him
but he does not understand that this is not what i want from him
his world view is what i fight against each day

and as i try to implant others’ qualities into myself,
i realise with much chagrin that i shall have to battle
continuously to keep his qualities away.
qualities which were ingrained into my person at birth.

perhaps, the good thing i can glean from the whole shebang is: not to always complain about the grass on your side. be mindful of the good things you have always and be thankful. i am also more cautious about the consequences of my action, and the repercussions it can create.

today was the first day of classes for my course in Advertising. i met up with my fellow classmates once again, and in our conversations, gathered that more than a handful had either recently left their jobs, are going to quit or are looking for employment.

seems like we are all caught in this vicious cycle. employers took advantage of the bad job market by offering contract positions with limited benefits for employees or low salaries for crummy jobs. and now that the job market is slightly picking up, everyone is jumping ship all over the place. to speak of job stability is laughable. it’s a thing of the past. we are all running scared, trying to look out for No. 1.

the second day was when it became even weirder. an early morning breakfast, followed by a leisurely nap, disturbed only by an hour of cleaning up and returning stores. the word of mouth transmission somehow reached our ears that there was a small reception at the cookhouse for us. so we trooped to the cookhouse and found a lavish buffet spread. we tucked in without hesitation, of course, gorging ourselves with second, third and fourth helpings, and laughing ourselves silly (possibly in a high, induced by all the chocolate eclairs we had downed). contented and full, we trudged back to the bunk and slept off the food all the way until it was time to out-process.

a buffet spread during a reservist training!? what has the world come to?

but i’m not complaining of course.